How are your plants doing in the gritty and 5.1.1 mixes?

14 years ago

Does anyone want to take a first stab at telling us how their plants are doing now, and maybe, well, PLEASE post pictures and positive experiences? What benefits have you noticed?..

I would love this to be a lively thread..I would love to see everyones progress and happy plants..

Looking forward to it..Maybe Al could get us started?..lol

Mike..:-)

I will be back later and post many of mine..

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Comments (9)

tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
14 years ago
I'll make it short. The plants are doing great, and the benefits include healthier plants that are easy to care for and a greater margin for grower error.

5:1:1
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Gritty
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5:1:1
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Gritty
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5:1:1
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Gritty
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Gritty
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Gritty
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5:1:1
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Gritty
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Gritty
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Al
sprtsguy76
14 years ago
Very nice A1!
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Absolutely bareroot them. The ease of removing the medium and barerooting the plant is one of the great things about aggregate media like gritty. Barerooting also eliminates any potential for soil interface problems between the container medium and the soil. The way you get the soil inbetween all the roots is called 'mudding in'. Basically you make the plating hole a muddy mess and sort of shake the plant a bit to get the airpockets to rise to the surface. If the soil is fairly liquid, it will fill in very well. What is really cool is that once the water has drained and the soil has settled around the roots, the plant is very stable and probably won't even need to be staked. I have planted 15gal trees that I barerooted on a hillside where we regularly get 20-30mph winds (and even higher gusts) without staking and they weren't even phased. I will say that I don't bareroot ornamental grasses grown in something like 511. They will expand out of the 1gal planting hole so quickly soil interface problems don't matter if you keep everything watered.
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Josh thank you so much for all the answers and clarifications! All four trees are now in the new pots. I did root trim all of them (took 1/3-1/2 of roots) so I expect some leaf drop. I didn't really prune the tops though. I have heard that some people recommend taking off the top when you take off the bottom. Do you agree with this line of thinking? One of the trees, a tango mandarin which has the most full canopy, looks a little sad. The other three look basically the same as they did before the transplant. I am trying to include a picture that I took this evening, but it isn't uploading for some reason... The tree just looks like the leaves are drooping. I don't know a lot about transplant shock but would like to avoid it if I can!! The tango also seems a little more "loose" in the pot than the others. I had planned on staking right next to the trunk until you mentioned to do it at the edge of the pot. When you do it this way do you put stakes in on opposite sides of the pot and put strings from each stake with equal resistance, essentially holding the tree totally still? (Hope you understand what I mean) or do you tie off loosely to the end of a branch near the container edge. Seems like that wouldn't offer much support but maybe I am not understanding correctly. I will follow your fertilizing advice! And I will transition them back to full sun slowly, starting in a week! Thank you so much for all your advice. My tres thank you too, they wouldn't have a good chance of survival without the help that I have received on these forums! Emily
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okay, i misunderstood. i thought i was reading about the gritty mix and turns out, it was for the 5-1-1. i added dolomite to my gritty mix and i just put all my succulents in that mix. what do i do? oh i dont want to lose them all..
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@Nil13 made reference to the Whitcomb 311 mix, which is an earlier historical attempt to create a more coarse potting soil for container plants. I think it is extremely helpful to read a document written by Carl Whitcomb that explains how he came on this formula by accident. Essentially what happened is he accidentally left nine test pots under a bench and everyone forgot they were there. They had successfully nearly killed all of their test plants by watering in a normal potting soil mix and the unwatered plants started to do very well. What I have started to realize is that any plant can do well in many different soil mixes, if you are able to carefully control the watering. This explains why so many people on this forum claim gritty mix is not as good for their succulents as their (fill in some random horrible soil with lots of small particles) mix. Inevitably those people are growing their plants indoors. They have enormous experience with their plant type and they know exactly when to water the plant. So that is the case of a very skilled gardener compensating for a very bad soil. What gritty mix does for me is let me grow succulents outside in very abusive weather conditions, without the plant dying. A plant can get a week of rain and it will still drain well. During Summer, gritty mix will tolerate a bit of overwatering, although you still really need to pay attention to not overwatering. Whether you make your 511 mix with perlite/peat, or with two parts Turface, or with lava and pumice, is probably in the big picture not going to be the deciding factor in whether your plants grow well or not. Success can be add with any of those mixes because the size of the particles allows the roots to breathe and prevents capillary action of water from bring the perched water table to the top of the pot and drowning the roots. Fine-tuning how you make 511 is a question of matching the plant type to the moisture retention of the soil and to the watering habit and climate exposure. Any 511 variant is going to do better than almost any commercial potting soil because of the larger particles used in the majority of the mix.
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mamasas
14 years ago
My veggies love the 5-1-1. I have some of them in regular potting mix because I didnt know about the 511 before hand. They are slow to grow. I have to take a screw drver and stick it down in the "soil" so air can get down there and that has helped alot. I just put in a dwarf navel in the gritty mix yesterday and he is sitting on my front porch for a couple weeks. So we will see. I expect to see some leaf drop from shock. Al, your plants are just beatiful. I wish I had time to plant more.
greenman28 NorCal 7b/8a
14 years ago
Hot Peppers over-wintered in a gritty mix and looking spectacular.

Thai (hybrid) - going into its second year -

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Hungarian Hot Wax - going into its third year thanks to the wintering gritty mix -

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Seedlings started in a gritty mix, then moved into a mix closest to the 5-1-1 -

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The seedlings went into the garden on May 1st, so that ended the container aspect of this season.
However, this is what the roots looked like in the ~5-1-1 mix after eight days -

Arbol -

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Poblano -

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Poblano -

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meyermike_1micha
Original Author
14 years ago
Josh and AL, WOW!!!!!

Amazing plants!! Al, that last plant you planted, I WANT ONE!!lol

Josh, your peppers seem awfully happy..Look at those roots! Please, how exactly do you make your mix? The gritty and 5.1.1...It looks like a different color than that of mine, and I like it!

I will be back eventually with some of mine..;-)
greenman28 NorCal 7b/8a
14 years ago
Hey, Mike!

My mix is gritty...but it's not *the* Gritty Mix... ;)
I'm using Bark, Perlite, and Pumice for my main ingredients.

I use the same ingredients to approximate the 5-1-1:
Bark (with the dust/fines included for moisture retention), Perlite, and Pumice.

This is the best mix that I've ever used.

Josh
meyermike_1micha
Original Author
14 years ago
Sweet! I think your mixes always look fantastic..

Seems to me every plant you grow like it even more..:-)

You will be hearing from me soon man..

Mike
tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
14 years ago
The plant with the big caudex is Fockea edulis, and had you spoken sooner, I'd have given you one. I gave one away last Fall that looked just like it.

I noticed all the mycorrhiza interspersed between the roots.

Al
meyermike_1micha
Original Author
14 years ago
Shoot, but I must say thank you anyway..

That is one unusually absolutely beautiful odd looking plant you have there.. Very healthy looking, all of them!

I also LOVE the little forest you got going there..It almost looks erie..Sort of like something is lurching in the back round..

You know, they are as beautiful as the ones I saw at my local Bonsai nursery.

Great job friend!

MIke

How are your plants doing in the gritty and 5.1.1 mixes?

Comments (9)

tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)

sprtsguy76

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How are your plants doing in the gritty and 5.1.1 mixes?

Comments (9)

tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)

sprtsguy76

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